Writers on a New England Stage: David McCullough

David McCullough, he Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Truman and John Adams comes to The Music Hall to discuss his latest work, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris.

'McCullough is one of our most gifted living writers.' —The Washington Post

As David McCullough writes, 'Not all pioneers went west.,' and his book is a powerful narrative of those who went the other direction: to Europe, to Paris. Like the pioneers out west, says McCullough, these men and women were willing to face the adversities that come from engaging in an entirely new experience, not just for their own improvement but to benefit their country. THE GREATER JOURNEY is a chronicle spanning generations of the many gifted young Americans, ambitious to excel, whose time in Paris—from 1830 to 1900—changed their lives and thus the course of American literature, medicine, art, architecture, music, dance, and history. Many of these central characters are well known—James Fenimore Cooper, Samuel F. B. Morse, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary Cassatt and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Others are less so, like Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female physician in the United States, and Elihu Washburne, whose experience through the Siege of Paris is one readers will never forget. 'THE GREATER JOURNEY is a book I’ve wanted to write for a long time, and to a degree it comes out of a conviction that history is a lot more than just politics and the military. Since I was a boy I’ve been fascinated with Paris and the experiences of American artists and musicians, writers, and students of medicine and architecture, who took it upon themselves to go there when that wasn’t easy and who brought home so much of immense value to all of us,' says Mr. McCullough. 'This is a big part of the American story, much of which has been too long overlooked. What amazing men and women they were and what a journey they had!'

Said Jonathan Karp, Executive VP and Publisher at Simon & Schuster, 'As always, readers will be exhilarated by the way David McCullough takes us on a journey. You feel as though you’re on the streets of Paris, where wine is cheaper than milk and history is happening before your eyes.'